we had easter dinner at my aunts house and my dad and i brought the boat so we would fish. after dinner around 3:45 people started leaving so my dad and i drove down to the lake (my aunt lives in the neighboorhood surrounding the lake, 1 minute drive to the lake).
it was cold and windy and we were having a sucky time. we fished shallow we fished in weeds we fished in lily pads we fished deep, we couldn't find fish.
i don't know how long into the trip it was, probably close to an hour and a half, when my dad hooked up with the first fish in about 10 feet of water, fishing with a 7" red shad Hookup worm.
he was very excited to catch this fish and the first time it jumped, it cleared the water, and he got a look at it and said that it was a nice fish and might be his PB, i laughed at him because i knew it was clearly a pound and a half.
it turned out to be a nice healthy 14"er
a while later we turned the corner in the lake and started fishing around in there. its pretty shallow, not much more than 3 or 4 feet, lots of lily pads. only a few were still up, most were dead under water (as was the case with the rest of the lake).
i found a nice cove and made a cast into there, and i was just talking about how i was gonna catch a fish, and on my first cast i had a fish down there playing with my 6" black/blue ***. i let it play with it for a few seconds then set the hook and came up empty. my dad said i was too anxious. i made a cast to the same spot, and sure enough that bass was back, and i let it have this bait for a good 5-8 seconds. when i felt the line tightening up on its own, i nailed it, and brought in this nice healthy 13" bass.
after that my dad started casting into the same cove.
not but 10 minutes after that, my dad casted his 7" red shad Hookup worm close to shore, and soon after the bait landed in the water, got a strike. he hadn't even begun his retrieve yet. he wasn't really sure if the fish was on or not, and was hesistant to set the hook.
its a good thing he did.
he set the hook and i immediately knew it was a great fish, because his rod had a nice bend in it. a bend that most fish don't put on a rod on the hook set.
i asked him if it was a nice fish and if it was fighting hard. he said (a little embarassed that he thought his last fish may have been his PB: "yeah, its alright".
i knew it was better than alright, just from the way it was fighting.
he fought it and after a pretty long, hard battle, got it close to the boat. when it was about 7 feet away from the boat, i could see the golden color glowing underwater and could tell it was a monster. then it came up to the surface and splashed around a bit, and then with one big whip of its tail it threw water everywhere and dove under the boat.
i got real scared. this thing was pulling so hard now, that my dad's rod was bent in half. this rod was curved no less than 3/4 of the way down. the fish was well under the boat, and still fighting to get to the other side of the boat. i was so scared that the hook was going to just rip out at this point.
somehow my dad managed to get it back up to the side of the boat, and i saw that thing's giant mouth.
i reached down there, and fumbled around to get a thumb in its mouth. it took me 3 attempts to secure the fish, and what was probably only 10 seconds, felt like forever.
i finally got my thumb in this fish and it was such a feeling of relief and awesomness.
as soon as i lifted it out of the water, my dad and i both said "holy $%^&!!!!!!"
i handed the fish over to him, took some pictures, measured it, weighed it, and let it swim off.
here it is, my dad's new PB, a healthy, strong, 22", 5lb 8oz largemouth bass!
the worm barely peeking out of that bucket of a mouth:
